Jazz dance

• 1. Introduction

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  Jazz dance is a performance style that arose in the United States in the early 20th century. It carries a name that has, at times, had little or nothing to do with jazz music at all. By the 1990s, colleges and universities were applying the same two words to physical education classes where students moved to pop songs. Hollywood and Broadway had been doing something similar since the 1940s, attaching the label to choreography that lived far from the dance halls where it began. So what is the thing underneath the word? The answer reaches back into African dance traditions, into the everyday life of African American communities, and into the rhythms that gave the music its name. It runs through Harlem in the 1920s, through a harbor city in South Carolina, and onto film screens and television stages decades later. The dancers who carried it forward each left a distinct fingerprint, and their stories are where this begins.

• 2. Vernacular And Dramatic

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  Vernacular jazz dance grew out of everyday life. The term describes dance forms that emerge from the social, cultural, and historical practices of a specific community. In African American culture, that meant styles shaped by African traditions, European dance forms, and the lived experiences of African Americans in the United States. This branch incorporates ragtime moves, the Charleston, the Lindy hop, and mambo. Its performers form a long roster. They include The Whitman Sisters, Florence Mills, Ethel Waters, the pairing of Al Minns and Leon James, Frankie Manning, Norma Miller, Dawn Hampton, and Katherine Dunham. A second branch grew on the show stage rather than in the community. Dramatic jazz dance was promoted by figures such as Jack Cole, Bob Fosse, Eugene Louis Faccuito, and Gus Giordano. Both branches expand on African American vernacular styles that arose alongside jazz music. The split between the social floor and the proscenium stage helps explain why a single name later stretched to cover so many different things. Some classes now even use electroswing, a style that blends jazz with electronic dance music.

• 3. African Roots

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  Bent knees, complex rhythms, and the isolation of body parts defined traditional African dance, and all three fed directly into what would follow. These characteristics produced a dynamic and expressive form of movement that traveled with African Americans into a new context. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, black performance art began to gain visibility in the United States. Vaudeville and minstrel shows, for all their constraints, became platforms where black entertainers showed their talents through dance, music, and comedy. Shows such as The South Before the War and The Creole Show featured black performers and helped evolve the styles that would later shape jazz dance. The art form's history is intertwined with the cultural and social experiences of African Americans themselves. That heritage would soon find its loudest expression in a single neighborhood during a single decade.

• 4. Harlem Renaissance

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  The 1920s brought the Harlem Renaissance, a movement that celebrated black art, literature, and music. Jazz music grew steadily more popular, and dance styles evolved with it, drawing on African traditions, social dances, and the music itself. This period lifted figures such as Josephine Baker and the Nicholas Brothers, who carried jazz dance to mainstream audiences. In 1931, the New Negro Art Theatre presented a groundbreaking recital that included interpretive dances based on Southern spirituals. The program showed black life through dance and set a precedent for the performances that came after. Dancer Hemsley Winfield was central to this moment, insisting that the black experience belonged on the stage as a subject for art. The neighborhood's cultural energy soon collided with a wider economic shock that pushed even more people toward the dance floor.

• 5. Swing And Shimmy

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  In 1917, jazz pianist Spencer Williams wrote a song called "Shim-Me-Sha-Wabble," and it inspired a jazz dance called the shimmy. The shimmy holds the body still except for the shoulders, which are quickly alternated back and forth. Out of the same era came the Charleston and the Lindy hop. The Lindy hop was a wild and spontaneous partner dance, extremely conscious of rhythm and built for two bodies moving as one. When the Great Depression began in October 1929, many people turned to dance, and the Lindy hop found new life under the umbrella term swing dance. The choreographers who later shaped the theatrical side drew on this restless energy. Jack Cole's style was called hip, hard, and cool, while Bob Fosse pulled together vaudeville, striptease, magic shows, nightclubs, film, and Broadway musicals into one recognizable language.

• 6. The Charleston

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  Named after the harbor city of Charleston, South Carolina, this dance carried hand clapping, broad movements, and foot stamping into the 20th century. Those gestures linked directly to the African origins of The Juba, a dance that came from the Kongo. Its popularity surged in the 1920s, especially after the 1923 song "The Charleston," composed by James P. Johnson for the Broadway show Runnin' Wild. The dance reached its peak between 1926 and 1927, captivating audiences with energetic, lively movement, marked by toes-in, heels-out twisting steps. The Charleston changed jazz dance in a structural way, because it could be performed alone. At the time, ballroom dance was the norm and required a partner, so a solo dance opened a door that had been closed. That freedom to dance without a partner would echo through the improvised forms that followed.

• 7. Improvisation

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  Riffing is the heart of it: dancers folding personal movements into established patterns, balancing innovation against tradition. This spontaneous yet structured form of choreography draws on a deep understanding of various dance traditions. In African American vernacular dancing, improvisation reflects the cultural identity of its dancers by serving as a dynamic form of expression. It weaves personal creativity together with communal tradition, letting dancers convey individual experiences and emotions while engaging the historical and cultural narratives of their communities. The improvisational aesthetic sits deep within the ceremonial and communal aspects of African American life. It carries values of oral communication and sensory experience, the same values that would later surface on screens watched by millions.

• 8. Screens And Stars

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  So You Think You Can Dance helped make contemporary jazz widely known, with Mia Michaels's earlier work as a clear example of the style. Other names shaping contemporary jazz dance include Sonya Tayeh, Mandy Moore, and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. Commercial jazz, popular since the 1980s, blends hip hop and jazz, is often set to pop music, and tends to include more tricks. It appears in the music videos of Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul. Latin jazz forms another branch, emphasizing the movement of hips and isolations, and Maria Torres developed and popularized the fusion at Broadway Dance Center. It can be seen in the films El Cantante and Dance with Me. Movies such as A Chorus Line and Saturday Night Fever helped re-popularize jazz dance, and in the 1980s MTV showcased high-energy videos that mixed jazz, ballet, and street dance. Behind these styles stand the dancers who built them. Jack Cole influenced Matt Mattox, Bob Fosse, Jerome Robbins, and Gwen Verdon, and is credited with popularizing the theatrical form of jazz dance. Katherine Dunham, an anthropologist and choreographer, introduced isolations and created the Dunham technique, marked by simple lines and a wide variety of tempos. In 1944 she opened the K.D. School of Arts and Research in Isadora Duncan's former New York studio, followed by the Dunham School in 1945, where Marlon Brando and James Dean studied. Eugene Louis Faccuito, known as Luigi, created the first codified jazz technique, the Luigi Technique. Bob Fosse turned his sexually suggestive movements into the unmistakable look of Cabaret and Chicago. Gus Giordano became known in Chicago for clean, precise movement, and Patsy Swayze combined jazz and ballet, founding and directing the Houston Jazz Ballet Company. Hemsley Winfield used the black body to discuss racial identity, and in his 1933 Forum Recital titled "What shall the Negro dance about?" he asserted the importance of African cultural roots and Southern work songs. Josephine Baker, famous in the 1920s for her performances at the Folies Bergere and her banana skirt, went on to a national tour and recognition as the NAACP's "Woman of the Year."